Popular

At this time of the year, the the law library (which is not accessible only to law students, but also to any students in the university, as it's essentially a branch of the university library) is a very popular place to study. This is the queue, just before 9am, to be admitted. The issue of study space overcrowding is a live one especially in the run up to exams, which start next week. We had to have our School Christmas / Winterval get together today in a neighbouring space as from tomorrow that room is turned over to emergency study space (although ironically not that well used....I guess it's just not as nice as the law library).

Today was a bit of a wash out. I hardly slept last night. My gums started aching when I went to bed, probably because of over enthusiastic dental hygiene combined with being generally a bit run down and thus susceptible to bumps and bruises. As a result, I only slept for about an hour, and spent most of the night reading my novel. Inevitably, of course, I started catastrophising during the night about all manner of things, including the inconvenience of having a gum or tooth infection at this time of the year. Memories of unpleasant times past.

I spoke to the dental receptionist who took down some details and then consulted the dentist before phoning back to say that at this stage my self-diagnosis of over enthusiastic dental hygiene was probably the correct one, and I should just keep the area clean and come back to them if it got worse. By that stage it was already getting better, so I'm sure that's right. But after my last experience, I'm more than a little sceptical.

Anyway, in a spirit of self care, I left the Christmas party after about an hour to come home and finish my novel in the comfortable and warm surroundings of Mr A's study (our winter sitting room) before taking an early night. I also skipped going to an old friend's inaugural lecture, which was a bit sad and annoying, but self care was prioritised.